- Identify the four connected pillars of Berkeley Law's environmental and energy program.
- Distinguish the curriculum's cross-cutting courses from its three principal focus areas.
- Explain how certificates, interdisciplinary study, CLEE research, clinics, and student activities support legal education.
- Describe the backgrounds, career paths, international opportunities, and emerging subjects associated with the program.
A Four-Part Program
Berkeley Law combines academic study, research, applied legal work, and student initiatives in one environmental and energy law ecosystem.
The program is not simply a course catalog. Its four connected parts give students several ways to study environmental and energy law, apply it, investigate policy questions, and form a professional community.
- Curriculum: the law school's range of environmental and energy courses.
- Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment (CLEE): the program's research center, which studies policy problems and works with varied stakeholders.
- Clinical program: supervised legal work for actual clients on environmental and energy matters.
- Student-led activities and organizations: projects, journals, and groups that support exploration and community beyond classes.
Together, these pillars link doctrine, policy research, practical experience, and student initiative.
What are the program's four pillars, and what kind of learning does each provide?
They are the curriculum for academic study, CLEE for research and policy engagement, the clinical program for supervised client work, and student-led activities for exploration and community.
Curriculum: Breadth with Room to Specialize
A broad course selection lets students combine common foundations with subjects that match their interests.
Environmental and energy law covers too much territory for a single fixed path. Berkeley therefore offers many courses and groups them into broadly useful subjects and more specialized directions.
Courses That Reach Across the Field
Four courses have value across many environmental-law interests:
- Introduction to Environmental Law and Policy surveys environmental impact statements, toxic substances, air and water pollution, and climate change.
- Climate Change Law is widely relevant because climate questions intersect with many other environmental issues.
- Environmental Justice examines a concern that runs throughout the field: how environmental burdens and benefits are distributed.
- International Environmental Law approaches the broad range of environmental problems at the global level.
Cross-cutting experiential options include the Environmental Law Clinic, field placements for credit with organizations such as the Sierra Club or public agencies, and opportunities for environmental writing and research.
Three Focus Areas
Students may explore three main concentrations without treating them as formal majors. Many choose classes from all three, while others emphasize a particular interest.
- Environmental Transaction Law considers issues that arise in sales of land or companies, including responsibility for contamination.
- Public Lands and Natural Resource Law addresses the federally owned third of the United States and activities involving oil, gas, minerals, and logging, all of which create major environmental questions.
- Biodiversity Law studies legal protection for species and ecosystems.
- Land Use connects rules such as zoning with environmental consequences, including urban sprawl, air pollution, and climate change.
- Climate Change Law also belongs in this specialized area.
- Pathways to Carbon Neutrality examines how California and China plan to reduce emissions in time to meet their climate targets.
- Introduction to Energy Law and Policy presents the legal framework surrounding energy production and use.
- Renewable Energy provides advanced study of legal questions involving sources such as solar and wind.
- Energy Project Finance covers the funding structures behind solar farms, windmills, and transmission lines, recognizing that regulation cannot build projects without capital.
- Water Law asks who receives freshwater, in what quantity, and at what required level of cleanliness.
- The water dimension of Biodiversity Law matters because rivers, lakes, and oceans support many species.
- Ocean and Coastal Areas examines law governing marine settings.
A student wants to study urban sprawl, solar-farm financing, and freshwater allocation. Which focus area contains each interest?
Urban sprawl belongs under land and resources, solar-farm financing under climate and energy, and freshwater allocation under water and oceans.
Certificates and Study Beyond the Law School
Certificates show sustained preparation, while outside courses and joint degrees add interdisciplinary depth.
Environmental and Energy Certificates
JD students may earn either an Environmental Law certificate or an Energy Law certificate. Each can show prospective law-firm, nonprofit, or government employers that a student has pursued a substantial and committed course of study.
- A certificate communicates a solid, deliberate background in the field to future employers.
- It also reflects the school's commitment to keep the required group of courses available.
LLM students, who attend for one year, have separate requirements aligned with courses available during that year so that an occasional course omission does not disadvantage them.
Courses Elsewhere and Joint Degrees
Berkeley's wider campus contains highly ranked departments working on environmental topics. Law students may take at least a couple of courses outside the law school, and the school identifies especially relevant options, including offerings in environmental science, policy, and management.
Students seeking a more integrated interdisciplinary path can pursue joint degrees with:
- the Department of Urban Planning;
- the Energy and Resources Group (ERG), an interdisciplinary energy and environmental department;
- the public policy school at Berkeley;
- the Harvard Kennedy School of Public Policy.
These programs combine a JD with deeper preparation in another discipline.
Why might a student value a certificate yet decide not to pursue one?
It can signal sustained expertise and commitment, but its required courses may leave less room for clinics, externships, and electives.
CLEE: Research and Policy Engagement
CLEE serves as the program's research arm and a hub connecting scholarship, policy, students, and professional networks.
The Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment operates as the law school's internal research center and in some respects resembles a nonprofit think tank. It investigates developing environmental and energy topics, convenes policymakers, advocates, industry representatives, and members of the public, and publishes research and policy reports intended to inform solutions.
- Oceans Program: topics such as offshore wind, especially its potential in California.
- Land Use Program: housing, zoning, open space, and the use of agricultural land for carbon sequestration.
- Water Program: drought, groundwater management, water rights, and connected challenges.
- Climate and Energy Program: renewable power, energy storage, electric vehicles, direct air capture of carbon, and other subjects.
How Students Participate
CLEE regularly invites law students, and sometimes students elsewhere on campus, to assist with research projects for compensation or academic credit. This lets students contribute to policy work while developing research experience.
Because CLEE staff continually collaborate with government, nonprofits, and industry, the center can also point students toward employment possibilities, contacts, and workplaces suited to their interests.
The center further supports and coordinates student groups, presents events, helps with group budgets, and organizes an annual banquet for the environmental-law community.
How could assisting with a CLEE policy project extend classroom learning, and what abilities might the work develop?
It could apply legal study to a current policy problem while building research, policy-writing, stakeholder-engagement, and briefing experience.
The Clinical Program
Clinics and field placements turn classroom knowledge into supervised work on real environmental and energy matters.
Under faculty supervision, students represent real clients and confront actual legal issues. The Environmental Law Clinic handles varied matters and often emphasizes environmental justice and equity for underserved communities.
Field placements provide credit for work at organizations such as the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, or the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), exposing students to the daily practice of environmental law.
- A possible type of clinic matter: advocacy for low-income utility customers.
- Advice to cities, states, or provinces in different countries on lowering greenhouse-gas emissions.
- Equity-related environmental-justice projects; specific matters vary.
Which program component is more likely to represent a particular client in litigation: CLEE or the clinic?
The clinic. CLEE generally concentrates on research and policy, while the clinic accepts specific clients and legal matters.
Student-Led Exploration and Community
Student projects, journals, organizations, and informal networks create additional routes into the field.
The fourth pillar consists of initiatives students shape themselves. These activities let participants test interests, acquire experience, and develop relationships outside formal courses.
Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects
Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects, or SLIPS, are created and operated by students.
- ECO gives students an early view of environmental legal work before they can enter the clinic, which is generally available to 2Ls and 3Ls.
- Radical Real Estate explores connections among environmental law, housing, and land use.
Journal and Student Organizations
Students may join the environmental-law student journal ELQ during their first year. The journal offers an introduction to environmental legal scholarship and is known as a popular, social community.
Students for Economic and Environmental Justice connects environmental law with wider social-policy concerns. Students also collaborate with faculty and CLEE staff to broaden the range of courses and lectures.
Forming a Community
The student culture is described as cooperative rather than competitive. Environmental-law students work together in SLIPS, journals, classes, study groups, and shared course outlines. They also create informal networks, including a group chat formed for women of color pursuing environmental law.
Students can shape their own combinations of classes and activities, so different participants may build very different versions of the program.
How could joining a journal or SLIP help a student choose a direction within environmental law, and what community might the student build?
Either activity can expose the student to legal scholarship, service work, and peers with related interests, helping refine a preferred field while creating collaborative academic and social ties.
Practical Perspectives for Prospective Students
Students can enter from many backgrounds and pursue work across public, nonprofit, private, academic, and international settings.
Background and Preparation
A science or technical degree is not necessary for success. These remain law courses centered on reading, writing, reasoning, and advocacy. Technical preparation may assist in a specialty, but leading environmental lawyers have also come from history, political science, and philosophy.
Students can gain technical understanding through relevant employment or volunteering, field placements, research-assistant work, and selected courses elsewhere on campus. Environmental problems require legal, scientific, engineering, financial, and communications knowledge; no individual possesses every needed skill.
Career Directions
Graduates can take environmental and energy work into several sectors:
- Government: local, state, and federal agencies, the Department of Justice, and state attorneys general, with work that includes permitting, enforcement, and lawsuits.
- Nonprofits: organizations such as the Sierra Club, NRDC, and Earthjustice, where lawyers conduct litigation, policy advocacy, and research.
- Private sector: environmental practices at firms, including plaintiff-side work, plus in-house roles with energy businesses, electric-vehicle manufacturers, and utilities.
- Academia and clerkships: judicial clerkships and scholarly careers form another path.
California's leading role in climate policy places students near novel government work and major environmental organizations with San Francisco offices or headquarters.
International Opportunities
Internationally oriented students can take International Environmental Law and may pursue the law school's United Nations program. In that semester program, a student serves as legal adviser to an assigned member state. An assignment to a small island nation, for example, can center on climate policy and rising sea levels.
Responding to a Changing Climate
The program changes as climate challenges develop. Energy law, once treated separately from environmental law, is now closely connected to it. The curriculum has added or discussed subjects including wildfire law, disaster law, carbon removal, geoengineering, and pathways to carbon neutrality.
Water and land-use teaching increasingly addresses adaptation to stronger floods and droughts. CLEE research likewise moves toward emerging responses such as engineered carbon removal, renewable hydrogen, and replacing natural-gas building systems with electrified technologies such as heat pumps.
Based on the program's pattern of adaptation, what environmental-law course would you propose for the next decade?
Bringing the Parts Together
The program's value comes from interaction among its four pillars.
The curriculum supplies legal foundations; CLEE connects research with policy; clinics provide supervised practice; and student projects, organizations, and journals support experimentation and community. Used together, these resources prepare students both to understand environmental law and to participate in its development.
Students can combine these elements around interests such as biodiversity, climate change, environmental justice, land and housing, water, or financing the shift to cleaner energy.
How could a student build a program around one environmental interest while using all four pillars?
The student could take related courses, join a CLEE research project, seek relevant clinic or field-placement work, and participate in a connected journal, SLIP, or student organization.
Common misconceptions
Watch out: A student must already have scientific or technical training to succeed in environmental law.
Instead: Environmental law relies primarily on legal reading, writing, reasoning, and advocacy. Technical knowledge can help in particular specialties, but students can acquire it through courses, work, research, or field placements.
Watch out: Students must choose one of the three focus areas and remain within it.
Instead: The areas are organizing categories rather than formal majors, and many students select courses from all three.
Watch out: Taking environmental-law courses requires pursuing a certificate.
Instead: Students may enroll in subjects that interest them without completing a certificate; the certificate is an optional structured credential with required classes.
Lesson recap
- Four pillars organize the program: courses, CLEE research, clinical practice, and student-led activity.
- The curriculum combines broadly useful courses with land and resources, climate and energy, and water and oceans focus areas.
- Certificates, outside courses, and joint degrees offer structured or interdisciplinary pathways, each requiring thoughtful planning.
- CLEE projects, clinics, placements, SLIPS, journals, and organizations provide research, practice, and community.
- Students from varied backgrounds can enter many employment sectors, while teaching and research continue to evolve with climate change.